NaPoWriMo 2025 (April 4th): Under the Gaze of Blue // The Portrait Above the Sink

From NaPoWriMo 2025: Today’s daily resource is the online exhibitions page of the International Folk Art Museum. I have a particular predilection for folk art, in which the strange and boisterous so often finds itself going hand-in-hand with practical objects of daily use. But the museum also showcases work of other sorts, like 100 Aspects of the Moon, a series of woodblock prints completed by the Japanese artist Taiso Yoshitoshi shortly before his death in 1892.

Last but not least, here’s today’s (optional) prompt. In her poem, “Living with a Painting,” Denise Levertov describes just that. And well, that’s a pretty universal experience, isn’t it? It’s the rare human structure – be it a bedroom, kitchen, dentist’s office, or classroom – that doesn’t have art on its walls, even if it’s only the photos on a calendar. Today, we’d like to challenge you to write your own poem about living with a piece of art.

[I wrote two poems.]

# Under the Gaze of Blue

Each morning,
I wake to the silent gaze
of the woman in the painting,
her eyes a deep, unfathomable blue,
like the sky just before dusk.

She does not speak,
yet her stillness fills the room,
whispers of untold stories
hanging in the quiet air.

I wonder what she knows—
does she ever tire of the frame that confines her?
Does she long for the brushstrokes of time,
the movement of a world beyond her borders?
Perhaps she is content,
anchored in this corner,
offering her gaze as a quiet companion
to the noise of my morning.

The light shifts,
and she changes with it—
now warm, now cool,
her face caught between shadows
and the stretch of the day.

I leave her each time I step out,
but when I return, she is always there,
waiting,
as if nothing has changed
except the passing of light,
the turning of hours,
and my own quiet passage through her world.

# The Portrait Above the Sink

It’s a woman in a bonnet,
her eyes too soft to see the dishes,
but they do, somehow—
like ghosts in the mist of morning steam.
I don’t know who she is.
Maybe she’s the ghost
of all the lost mothers whose hands
never stopped scrubbing.
Maybe she’s the wind,
a hurricane that swept through her hair,
wild and uncut.
Maybe she’s me, in ten years,
looking at the faucet,
wondering how the water got so brown.

I live with her now,
her face a quiet hum behind my shoulder
while I dig for last night's spoon.
We’ve both seen the same kitchen
too many times—
her, locked in paint,
me, dragging my body
through the same repetitive motions
of pouring cereal,
scraping the pan,
scrubbing the counters
as though nothing changes,
but her eyes—
they always remind me
that something else might.

- Oizys.